There is still no community-Ecopetrol agreement over the Cupiagua oil field, where 14 villages within the influence of the drilling are at loggerheads with the company over the distribution of local hiring percentages for the project and the management of investment funds.
The Bicentenary Pipeline says it has not only delivered on obligations to improve and maintain roads used for the project’s construction, it went on to improve rural roads of communities affected by the pipeline’s installation that were not required by law.
Criticism stemming from a press report last week that Oleoductos de los Llanos Orientales (ODL) had allegedly sought to advance the Araguaney Carmentea pipeline project behind closed doors and without community participation prompted the company to respond to Prensa Libre Casanare.
The Center for Analysis and Public Affairs (CAAP) has presented its first ranking of how well departments are managing royalties –whether direct, indirect, regional compensation, or for science/innovation- as a tool for the public debate surrounding the use of these funds.
Presidents of the community action boards of Tauramena and Villanueva, two villages that fall within the influence area of the “Llanos 32-34 and 3D Max” seismic exploration program, attended a meeting with the companies to define agreements surrounding social investment, wage, transport and monitoring.
As part of the 26th annual Bogota International Book Fair, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MADS) unveiled the book “Environmental Conflicts in Colombia”, in order to help develop the know-how of environmental authorities in the treatment and resolution of environmental conflicts in the country.
Ecopetrol has kicked off its third National Call to Biodiversity, and is on the lookout to invest US$2.2M in conservation projects that focus on the tropical dry forest. From an Ecopetrol press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.
The USO claims 9,000 people attended a rally last week in Meta to denounce abuses to workers and the community by oil and gas companies. As we have described recently, the USO is tapping into a current of popular discontent in the department, caused principally by changes in the royalty distribution scheme.
Sounding like something from a Transformers movie and merging the acronym ‘OCAD’ (for the initials in Spanish of the boards that approve projects looking for royalty money) and ‘marathon’, the invented word ‘OCADton’ is supposed to reassure local municipalities that the process is working faster in 2013. From a DNP press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.
On Tuesday, local news portal Prensa Libre Casanare reported that, through the mediation of a delegate of the Ministry of Interior, residents of the Monterrey and Aguazul communities lifted the block on the Cupiagua field, which is controlled by Ecopetrol. According to Luis Eduardo Cardozo, a spokesman for the protesters, the blockade was lifted but the community is still unhappy: “We demand social investment, labor supply and procurement of goods and services,” he said.
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